Rats of Tobruk wore the name as badge of honour
Between April 10 and November 27, 1941, Australians were under siege in the city of Tobruk. It was yet another of the places whose names and the memory of those souls who fought there, that are indelibly printed on the fabric of Australia.
Tobruk was a port on the Mediterranean; in fact, it was the only deep water port in Eastern Libya, and its capture was absolutely essential if the Allies were to advance towards Alexandria and Suez. Because of this, it had been heavily fortified by its former Italian garrison. Now, in April of 1941, Germany’s Field Marshall Erwin Rommel chose the capture of Tobruk as the first of his planned offensive actions in North Africa. He was working on the premise that the Allies would not have sufficient time to organise a comprehensive defence. However, he had not factored the Aussie digger into his calculations. They fearlessly fought off the initial German assaults between April 10 and 14, and even when Rommel threw the fresh force of the 15th Panzer Division at them in the attack of April 30, the defenders held on.
It’s worth noting here that the strategic importance of this port had been recognised for millennia. The Ancient Greeks named the harbour Antipyrgos. Centuries later, the Saracens, the Muslim Arabs against whom the English fought during the Crusades, established a fortress to guard the harbour, which they now renamed Marsa Tobruk. It had long been a focus for power and fights for
possession. It even played a role in the lead-up to WWI when the Italians sought to crush the 7000-strong Turkish garrison there. Mustafa Kemal, a Turk well known to history, travelled to Libya to raise jihad against the invading Italians, successfully regaining Tobruk. He commanded the Turkish Division at Gallipoli during the 1915 landings.
My Great Uncle Arch was one of the Rats of Tobruk, and my mind travels back to his funeral when those with whom he’d served attended to pay their respects. They may have been very old, but there was no mistaking the way they carried themselves. They were very much both proud and brave warriors. It seems odd then that such brave and
resilient men should be happy to carry the title Rats of Tobruk. How was such a title arrived at?
During the siege, life was awful for the men. They were under constant bombardment and military fire. The desert provided flies in plague proportions, and the lack of proper sanitation ensured that illness was rampant. In addition to this, fleas carry diseases quickly from man to man. Still, Aussies are stalwart and tried to maintain morale.
It came as no surprise then that when William Joyce, the British traitor better known as Lord Haw Haw, a man who broadcast to the Allies as part of the Nazi propaganda machine, described them as rats trapped, living in the rubble and gave
them the nickname Rats of Tobruk, they adopted it as a badge of honour.
The Australians were, indeed, the mainstay of the defence of Tobruk until August, when they were at last relieved by the British 70th Division, supported ably by the Polish Carpathian Brigade.
The Siege of Tobruk would go on to be one of the greatest Allied victories, sadly followed by one of the greatest defeats when 34,000 men of the British garrison surrendered to Rommel on June 21, 1942. The men who had relieved the Rats, lost Tobruk.